LibGuides: ENG 092: Blackness and Breathing: Primary Sources

Primary Sources

Primary sources are original documents used by scholars to reconstruct a historical event, provide an interpretation of a text, or engage in other intellectual activity. The terms "original" and "document" are both broadly defined. A digital reproduction of an English translation of a Latin text may be considered "original" in some contexts as far as primary sources are concerned. "Document" may also have a wide range of meanings: it may be a critical edition of a literary text, a manuscript, or a news paper, but it can also be an image, a speech, or a data set (to name only a few examples).

Primary Source Databases and Collections

#blacklivesmatter Web Archive
The #blacklivesmatter Web Archive contains news articles, blogs, social media, and other websites related to Ferguson, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, protests and demonstrations around the country, and seeks to document the movement as it grows and evolves.

African-American Poetry
Nearly 3,000 poems written by African-American poets in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
African American Newspapers 1827-1998
Part of the Americas Historical Newspapers collection, African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 allows you to search almost 300 African American newspapers from the 19th and 20th centuries.
African American Newspapers: The 19th Century
African-American Newspapers ultimately will contain the complete text of the major African-American newspapers published in the United States during the 19th century.
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995
More than 170 periodicals by and about African-Americans: academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, bulletins of organizations, annual reports, and other genres.

American Lynching
The robust Chronicling America API is paired with landmark lynching data from Tuskegee University as well as case files from the open source collaborative Project HAL, which seeks to document individual lynching histories. Taken together, they offer tools to chart a new path into the subject of media and race in American history.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
1860-1922; Library of Congress project that has digitized pages from newspapers from the following states: Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington
Covid Black
COVID Black works at the intersection of health data, information, the humanities, race and social justice. We redefine statistics and information into living data and stories about Black Health. We are data griots. We are Black data storytellers. And we are redefining the future of Black health by marrying ancestry with data analytics & technology.
Freedom on the Move
Created to control the movement of enslaved people, runaway ads ultimately preserved the details of individual lives--their personality, appearance, and life story. Taken collectively, these ads constitute a detailed, concise, and rare source of information about the experiences of enslaved people.

Liberation Movement in Africa and African America
Composed of FBI surveillance files on the activities of the African Liberation Support Committee and All African Peoples Revolutionary Party; this collection provides two unique views on African American support for liberation struggles in Africa, the issue of Pan-Africanism, and the role of African independence movements as political leverage for domestic Black struggles. Material from 1970-1985.

Lynching in America
This site features painful stories of America's history of racial injustice.

American Civil Liberties Union Papers
Full-text searching of records from the ACLU from before its founding in 1920 through the 20th century. Covers topics such as race, identity, gender rights, workers rights, popular protest, the role of government, and more.
History Vault
ProQuest History Vault includes: 1) The Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915 collection features petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867, 2) The U.S. Diplomatic Post Records, 1914-1945 collection offers a detailed view of U.S. foreign relations during the period from the years immediately before the outbreak of World War I through to the end of the Vietnam War 3) NAACP papers which covers Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files The NAACPs Major Campaigns: Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces and The NAACPs Major Campaigns: Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses.

Racial Violence Archive
The Racial Violence Archive (RVA) gathers and shares information related to racist violence in U.S. history. The collection focuses on terroristic acts (i.e., intimidation, violence, and reprisal used to create fear and control behavior) targeting African Americans in the 20th century U.S. South but will expand to incorporate other aspects of race-related political violence as the project continues.
Slave Voyages
This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action.

Find Primary Sources in JumboSearch

JumboSearch can be used to find books, articles, films, and other resources from Tisch Library. You can even customize your search results to return primary source material if you combine select subject terms with your other search terms. Here are other subject terms which will help you find primary sources in JumboSearch: